About
Where I come from,
'doing nothing' is a craft.
This is the longer version of the story.
Pour a coffee, there’s no rush.
Chapter one
The coast
I grew up in Split, Croatia, on the Dalmatian coast. Around here, there’s a word the rest of the world doesn’t have: fyaka. It’s the state of being fully present and completely unhurried.
As a kid, I didn’t know it was special. It was just how the world worked. The sea, the noise of the market winding down, whole hours where nothing happened and nothing was missing.
Nobody taught it as a lesson. It was in the air, like salt.
I only understood what I’d been given later on.
Chapter two
The valley
I’ve spent the last eleven years between Silicon Valley and Europe, building companies and communities, traveling, experiencing more than I could have imagined. I loved it, and I still do. I’m not here to talk you out of ambition.
But I also watched what the pace did to people around me. Brilliant, driven people running on urgency until something gave: health, marriages, judgment, joy. The unspoken deal was simple: you can have the career, or you can have yourself.
I wasn’t breaking the way the deal predicted, and when I asked myself why, the answer kept coming back in a word from home.
Fyaka wasn't what I did instead of the work. It was what made the work sustainable.
Chapter three
The receipts
I’m an engineer at heart, so I didn’t want this to stay a feeling. I tracked it. After a decade of building at full ambition while practicing fyaka daily, here’s what the numbers say:
8,000+
Workouts logged
24
Biological age at 39
<1%
Downtime in a decade
$3.2B
Leadership network built
The workouts happened because the energy was there, and the energy was there because the pauses were. The network grew because presence is what people remember about you in a room.
Calm isn't the reward for ambition. It's the fuel.
Chapter four
Noon, at Firule
When I’m home in Split, you can find me at Firule Bay every day at noon, ankle-deep in the sea, playing picigin, the Dalmatian game where a handful of people keep a small ball from touching the water. There’s no score and no winning, just enjoy and make it look good.
It sounds like a break from serious life, but it’s the opposite. It’s the anchor the serious life is tied to, an hour where no one asks what I do and the only thing that matters is exactly what’s in front of me.
Everyone needs a 'Firule', a time and a place where presence is the whole job.
The newsletter
A weekly pause, in writing.
Every Thursday, I send one short email. One idea about slowing down without losing your ambition, earned from a real moment, not theory. It takes two minutes to read, and it’s built to change the pace of your week.